Awesome 80s in April: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

indiana jones and the temple of doom poster

I was too young to have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark in theaters when it came out in 1980, but I must have watched it a million times on television soon after. I did see Temple of Doom in the theater. Probably three or four times. I would have been about 11 years old. I loved it.

As a kid I especially loved all the stuff that made the moral majority people clutch their pearls which eventually led to the making of the PG-13 rating. My friends and I would constantly ask each other which thing we’d rather eat – snakes, bugs, or monkey brains. We would pretend to reach into each other’s chests and pull our hearts out. We dreamed of being on that awesome mine roller coaster.

As an adult, I recognize the film’s many flaws. The least of which is not its cultural insensitivity, if not downright racism. Short Round is nothing but a Chinese stereotype, and there is a lot of stuff going on with the Indian characters and the “weird” stuff they eat. You could also certainly complain about the one female character and how she is nothing more than a “damsel in distress.”

I do not think any of this was intentional by the filmmakers in the sense that they were not trying to be racist or sexist. I think a lot of that comes from how the Indiana Jones films are Spielberg and Lucas riffing on the old serial films they used to watch as kids. Old adventure films were rife with racist tropes and inherent sexism.

But I’m also going to table that discussion. I’ll let the experts dig into that stuff. I feel like when talking about this film, you need to mention those concerns and recognize their validity, but at the same time I don’t want to get bogged down in them.

Also this film rips.

It is generally considered the worst of the original trilogy. Spielberg has distanced himself, claiming it was made during a difficult time in his life (he was getting divorced) and it is too dark. I’ll stand by the opinion that it isn’t as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but those are pretty high watermarks. There is still a ton of stuff to love in this film.

The opening scene in Shanghai, for starters. It begins with Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw, who later married Spielberg) singing “Anything Goes.” Spielberg shoots it like a classic musical. When the song ends, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) enters. He’s made a deal with a Chinese gangster, trading the remains of some ancient emperor for a precious diamond.

Set in 1935, one year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, making this film technically a prequel. They say Lucas and Spielberg didn’t want Indiana fighting Nazis again, so they set it a little earlier than the first film and moved the locations to Asia. It is interesting that in this film Indiana Jones is all about fortune and glory, and makes no mention of anything belonging in a museum.

With the help of Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), Indiana’s young sidekick, the three of them escape Shanghai but find themselves on a plane owned by the bad guy. The pilots dump the fuel and jump out of the plane, leaving it to crash into the Himalayas. Our heroes jump out of the plane using an inflatable raft as a sort of parachute and then sled that zooms down the snow covered mountain and over an impossibly high cliff and into some major rapids.

This scene is cartoonish in its impossibility. Most of the film will continue in this pattern. Raiders wasn’t exactly grounded in realism, but Temple of Doom pushes the bounds of possibility to an absurd degree. Not that it matters. It is still extraordinarily enjoyable.

They’ll be picked up by some villagers who explain that some thieves stole their sacred rock and their children, and ever since, everything has gone bad. Our heroes head to a palace where they are treated with kindness (and those crazy food choices.) There they will find a hidden passage that takes them to an underground temple and a group of cultists who practice child slavery and human sacrificing.

It all culminates in a wild chase scene with our heroes riding a mine cart like a roller coaster through an impossibly long shaft and then battling it out on a ridiculously high rope bridge.

I don’t know why I’m describing the plot; you’ve probably seen this film. It is crammed full with wonderfully crafted action sequences. Even when it slows down, it’s still entertaining.

You do have to table some of that insensitive stuff, and I completely understand those who can’t do that, but if you can this is a heck of a ride.

Westerns In March: The Quick and the Dead (1987)

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Not to be confused with the Sam Raimi film of the same name, this The Quick and the Dead stars Sam Elliott, Kate Capshaw, and Tom Conti and was based on a book by Louis Lamour. I haven’t seen the Raimi film, but I’d bet my ten-gallon hat it is a lot better than this nonsense.

In the Wild West, Duncan McKaskel (Tom Conti), his wife Susanna (Kate Capshaw), and their 12-year-old son Tom (Kenny Morrison) are traveling to Bighorn, Montana, where Susanna’s brother is camped with Custard. The rest of the wagon train were stricken with consumption.

They come across an old, worn-down town and ask a man named Doc Shabbitt (Matt Clark) for help. He says they can stay in an abandoned house for the night, but Duncan decides Shabbitt’s gang looks a little too shabby, and they decide to move along.

That night Shabbitt’s men steal two horses from our heroes. And then comes Con Vallian (Sam Shepherd). He’s half Native American and a full-blooded badass. He’s also the kind of guy who likes looking at Susanna and saying things like “Your wife sure is a handsome woman.” And then says it again. And again. Seriously, half his dialogue is saying inappropriate things to her. It is all kinds of creepy, and he’s the hero of this film.

Anyway, Vallian tells Duncan about the stolen horses and how Shabbit took them. He also says if he doesn’t do something about it, then Shabbitt’s men will think them weak and will keep coming back for more stuff and his woman. Vallian says he’ll take care of it, but Duncan says, “No” it is his battle to fight. Vallian says “ok” and you get the feeling he wouldn’t mind if Duncan got killed so he could have some good times with that “handsome woman.”

Duncan goes to the men and demands his horses back and nearly gets killed for it. Luckily, Vallian came in behind him and saves the day. When they return to camp, the boy hails Vallian as a hero and she starts looking at Vallian like maybe he’s a handsome man.

The rest of the film is like this. Shabbitt or his men will attack, and Vallian will defeat them. Tom wishes his dad was more like Vallian, and Susanna finds herself taking waterfall showers within Vallian’s view.

What pissed me off about all of this is that Duncan is a good man. He’s smart and fair, and he doesn’t lack for courage. He goes after Shabbitt just as much as Vallian, and he’s not afraid to look Vallian in the face and tell him to stop saying such things about his wife. He isn’t as tough or masculine as Vallian or as good with a gun. But he still deserves respect. And he isn’t getting it from his wife, his son, or even the film.

Now I will say that Tom does sometimes say to Vallian that his dad is tough. That he fought bravely in the war. And other than one good kiss, Susanna doesn’t give in to her temptation. But it is still a weird and rather lousy way the film frames Vallian as a hero. This is a TV movie so thing do work out in the end, and if they hadn’t I would have thrown my boots at the TV.

The action is rather dull. Shabbit and his men aren’t particularly interesting or threatening, and the rest of the film never really goes anywhere. There is a romanticism to the Old West that I suspect comes from Louis Lamour’s book, but I sure hope he treats his characters better.

Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to go watch the Sam Raimi film in hopes it will help me forget this mess.

Dreamscape (1984)

dreamscape poster

I’m watching one movie from every year I’ve been alive in chronological order. We’re now up to 1984. I’m also running behind on writing these things as I watched this one a couple of weeks ago. I also skipped ahead and already wrote about my 1985 entry, Runaway Train. As such my brain is already a little foggy on this film, so this will be short.

Dennis Quaid plays Alex Gardner, a psychic who used to get probed and prodded by some big government agency, but then ran away to pursue gambling by way of the ponies. When he runs afoul with a gangster, he joins back up with the feds (run by Max Von Sydow, slumming).

They’ve got a big new project where psychics can link with a sleeping person and interact with their dreams. Alex uses it to help people. In one of the film’s best and dumbest sequences, he joins up with a kid who has nightmares about an awesome-looking cobra-man and teaches him not to be afraid anymore. There’s a nice touch inside that dream. As Alex and the kid are running from the cobra-man they see another man in a suit sitting at a table, the kid says something like “That’s my dad, he won’t help.”

Kate Capshaw is the love interest. This is the type of movie that finds it funny for Dennis Quaid’s character to invader her dreams and try and get sexy with her.

Christopher Plummer is the government agent who figures they can use this dreamscaping to assassinate undesirables. Which includes the President of the United States (Eddie Albert). The President has been having nightmares about starting World War III three and Plummer’s character is afraid that’s gonna turn him into a peacenik. Seriously.

It gets dumber from there. One would hope a film about dreams would be more interesting visually, but other than the cobra-man it is all pretty boring looking. The rest of it doesn’t fare much better.